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Thursday, June 18, 2009

As Paul Harvey Would Have Said...and now, The Rest of the Story...

Our story did not end with the second person who claimed to want the piano and it will not end with the third, but I will lead through the rest of our piano giveaway adventure.The third people in line were a family with seven children whom they wished to instruct in the art of playing the piano. They had emailed us, so I happily emailed them and informed them that it was their lucky day, the piano was now indeed theirs if they chose to come and pick it up. Then I waited for their reply. And waited and waited some more. Then I got the reply. Remember the loose leg on the piano? The one that probably just needed a dowel to be able to use the screw again or a good dose of glue?? The one we had described in our ad? Well, it seems that the father of this family had written to us, but the mother was afraid the piano would fall on one of her precious offspring (keep in mind that it hadn't even wobbled once in the 2 years we had this piano, the leg was only an issue when moving the piano...like relocating it to a new house). So this family no longer wanted this piano. I did compose an email to them after piano taker number 4 fell through, although I never sent it. The main idea of the email said something like this, "the piano is very stable once in place in your home, so unless your seven children plan to drag the piano around the house every day, I don't see the leg as being a problem for you." I deleted that email, but it sure felt good to write it, even if they never saw it.Piano taker # 4. A woman named Tina who lived about 50 minutes away and again was someone who was going to rely on a friend with a pickup to help her get our piano. We set up a time that her friend had agreed to the next day after contacting her. The next day arrived and she said she was coming and then at the last minute she says her friend can't make it that day, could we make it the next day? We said, fine and said to let us know what time would work. The next day we get an email saying she will be coming around 6 in the evening, she confirmed it with her friend, they are getting ready to leave. 6 o'clock comes and she's not here and she hasn't called. Colin checks the email and sure enough, we have an email from her saying she would have called, but she doesn't have long distance and her calling card was all used up, her friend had bailed on at the last second. She was very nice and apologized, telling us we had been very patient and that if we still had the piano on June 12th, she would rent a U-Haul truck and come get the piano. June 12th??? We certainly hoped it would be gone by then!So we moved on to taker # 5. A man in Puyallup (huh, the spell check hates that one...you say it Pew-Al-lup, it's a town out here). This man promised to call at 4:30 the next day when he got off work and then head out to get the piano. 4:30 the next day, he didn't call, so Colin called him and got nothing. I called and I believe he answered, but then he hung up. I called back and left a voice mail saying you can call us or we're moving on down the list. That wasn't entirely true. We wanted to move on down the list, but didn't have any more names.When Colin got home that night I asked him to please list the piano on 2 good 2 toss, which is a little more local than Craigslist, which is where we got all but one of the lovely people we had dealt with so far. I had wanted him to list it on there in the first place, but he had listed it on Craigslist and one other local site and figured it was good enough, which it usually is, but it wasn't this time. So Colin posted it to the site and then we went to the table for dinner. That night at dinner, I not only prayed a blessing over the food, I prayed about giving away that silly piano. I prayed that God would send the right people for this piano, someone who had a real need for it. I told him how frustrated we were with the whole process and that we just wanted to be done and know that the piano was somewhere being put to use. We ate our dinner and after dinner, Colin checked our email. We had an email from a woman in our OWN town wanting to know if her family could take a look at it the next night. So we made the arrangements and gave them directions and waited with baited breath to see if this was it. The next evening arrived and so did the dad and grandpa from this family with a boat trailer and lots of straps for tying down a piano. It turned out to be the girls softball coach from the local high school whose daughter was taking piano lessons from one of the music teachers, but only had a tiny keyboard to practice on. And that loose leg?? Not a problem according to the grandpa, he'd just use some gorilla glue and it wouldn't be going anywhere. And so we watched them strap the piano in and then we stood back and watched it drive off into the sunset, knowing that God had just answered prayers for both parties involved with the giving and receiving of this piano.